Veni, vidi... vora (Devourer of WoRLdS !!! )

"I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend--to grasp what was happening around and within me....Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. It fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end."

-B. Hooks (1991, pp.1-2)

This excerpt preceded the chapter on "Theory-Based, Model-Based Community Practice (Hardcastle, Powers, 2004, pg.33)" It came right before the HOW TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER: 101 instructions to social work in practice. The opening of the chapter talked about group risistance as a difficult concept, how as social workers if we can identify a "opinion leader" we should isolate them from the group and convince them to join us/follow our lead-

so that later, the rest of the group will be more "receptive to change"...

Well, talk about fighting fire with fire-

Am I to understand that, in order to fight generations of shady happenings, broken treaties, and historical trauma in NDN country

creating secret alliances at "special meetings"

is going to help gain the trust and cooperation of the clients that I work with/for???

If the "opinion leader" pulls a Anna Mae Aquash and refuses to cooperate, then what, brute force?

Would Dickie Wilson qualify as an "opinion leader"???

How do such techniques of mental gymnastic prowess usually work, besides allowing us as social workers to consider our client bases as- not as smart as us, since we can apparently get them to "behave" however we see fit using undergraduate level phycology...

Furthermore, Indigenous people have been fighting with scientist for generations, all but screaming from the rooftops: We have a right to practice our religion, our medicines, our wholeistic ways of life and reacting to it!

Our religions were outlawed, our medicines were sprayed with pesticides, our ways were stolen as we were robbed of our children, and they were robbed of themselves...

In the aftermath of all these bad feelings,

in a book intended to educate me on Community Practice

I am reading about X and Y if E-I-E-I-OOOOO!

The reality we are facing here people is this:

1 nation divided by another nation= dead indians!!!

Same old recepie here folks.

If an NDN said:

"I came to Ceremony, desperate. I wanted to comprehend--to grasp what was happening around and within me.... Indian medicine is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. Ceremony fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so, and direct our people to this end." B. Pihnêefich (1995, Spiritual Biography, p.17)

Such an NDN would be hailed as a bullshit-o-logist, a plastic medicine man, a new ager! He would be seen as someone too fake to be a real NDN, and too published to be ignored. In short, he would be eaten alive by apples, book ndns, traditionalists, & white people alike. He would also recive fan mail, have several blondes trying to date him, he would receive invitations to speak at universities & hippy elementary schools during November (and his short, mediocre book would probably receive several pristeigous awards simply because his family survived long enough for him to become a published indian).

After receiving his awards, Mr. Pihnêefich would die penny less and alone in a tragic farm accident on his homosexual cousin's dude ranch in Arizona (alas, this would be all B. Pihnêefich was remembered for).

And yet, the same statement using "Theory" instead of ceremony is considered a heart-felt exploration of one social workers quest for the truth?

What it is, is mental masturbation

made valid

by virtue of belonging to the system

the same system that has attempted to invalidate

Indigenous Knowledge

& Indigenous Truth

for centuries.

In short, "resistance can take many forms and can be explained in many different ways (Hardcastle, Powers, 2004)." But, you know what???

Sometimes, RESISTANCE IS JUSTIFIED.

Think about it.

Let's talk about... Church !!!

"By definition, 'communities are composed of people who have relationships that are systematic, interactive, and interdependent' (Smith, 1997, p.14). Rural communities are characterized by multiple primary relationships and interdependence. Citizens are likely to have gone to school together, attended the same church and community activities, and shared the same doctors and other professional and service persons(Scales, Streeter, 2004, pg. 65)."

When it comes to rural NDN country today, we are still dealing with the aftermath of missionaries who tried to convert us to death. "Kill the Indian, save the man... (or child)."

Here in Northern California (on reservation row), from one corner to the next a person can literally count the amount of churches boasting various Anglo-faiths on two hands.

In addition to the usual suspects: baptist, jehova's witness, mormon, non-denomonational, evangelical, pentecostal, etc.; there are also several hybrid religions that emerged when Native Self-Sacrifice for the Fixing of the World hooked up with the Cross and gave birth to "all sorts of jumpin and jiving."

That is how powerful our native religion is, when the most powerful churches & country alligned themselves against our cultural selves and cultural salvation; our religions did not die.

When driven between four walls, Earth religion simply began to dance between pews!

Thus we began to stomp dance, while wearing crosses-

speak in tounges while receiving visions from god at public ceremonies that happened to be held on Sunday to the rhythm of a steel guitar-

Thus we received the gospel of snake handlers, and we handled native snakes ourselves-

Thus we bought pictures of Jesus and marveled about how much he looked like our cousin down the road, you know- the one with long hair & a beard...

Our Native religions were so strong, when it became safe to come back in their traditional forms, our dances were born again!

...and yet, the only ones who had seen the dances in their oldest & purest forms

were elders

members of a stolen generation

converts by force

by osmosis

by proximity

show me who your friends and neighbors are faithful too...

and i'll show you your religion-

well, during the time of revival it is said that the misfits of a generation embraced the indian identities that made it impossible for them to assimilate-

and so the spiritualists put down their liquid medicine and took up packing obsidian instead- and so the spiritualists took up dancing basket, again...

the young were hungry for a religion that belonged to them,

instead of religious figure heads that simple shared a similar haircut

but in a world post-christian influence

where the native religion had so strongly influenced the various forms of christianity in NDN country...

as the traditional elders taught us how to be,

their peers showed up to ceremony to socialize

and many of them were still more afraid of hell then they were of the earth not being fixed-

post boarding school, post-attempted genocide, post-traumatic-stress-DISorder...

christian values, the mean and undermining ones

the anti-love socialization practices

began to trickle into Native Religion.

And so we have reached a time of Neo-Traditionalism where Eurocentric rural thinking is tampering with Earth based ancient belief systems and the results are having troubling effects on Native community mindsets...

" 'In rural areas, more than any other geographic setting, conformity is strongly urged, if not demanded. Deviation from the 'traditional way of living' is strongly discouraged(Foster, 1997, pg.24)' This has positive & negative consequences. Well-established behavioral norms provide clear guidelines in many areas of life and reduce the incidents of deviant behaviors, such as alcohol abuse. On the other hand, those individuals who are 'different' may be stigmatized more than in diverse urban environments. Unfortunately racism, sexism, and homophobia may be tolerated in this conservative context (Smith & Mancoske, 1997). "

Add this reality to the confusion of Indigenous Wealth, and European monetary value and the result is a troubled time on the rivers. A time where how you conform is more important then how you treat others, a time where sometimes who you know is more important then how you live...

But, in the words of Bobby Dylan, "the times, they are a' chang'in."

WHO's AMeRiCA?

According to historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1893), "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development(Scales; Streeter; 2004)."

My question is, who's American development?

For the Indigenous people of this continent, our homelands and laws were already established.

We existed in the places we were born since time immemerable.

We have existed in this so called "America," since we were given life, since the birth of creation stories.

The mentality of Mr.Turner (1893), is that of a foreigner in a land where he assumes himself the center of the universe, so much so, that history did not begin until he arrived to write it.

And so the laws and creation stories of Native Peoples this continent over have been scribed and interpreted by non-native hands, looked upon as disappearing fairy stories, and they are taught today in some diluted version/perversion throught the American public school system (if they are taught at all).

The true histories of contact and its legacy pass on with the death of elders, the death of their stories, and the death of their children assigning value to our own histories- our oral histories...

In Karuk country they've begun documenting elders who speak the language.

25 years ago there were an estimated 250 Karuk Native Speakers, over the last quarter of a century it has dwindled down to 10 (a generous estimate).

The reality of the situation is that 25 years ago the speakers who were around, were elders, and the new generations were emmerging English native speakers (a trend which continues today, for the most part).

As tribal language is a kind of history of thought for tribal peoples, the importance of documentation has arisen in the conciousness of tribal councils & communities.

With the additional pressure of congress talking about requiring language proficiency as a pre-requisite to enrollability for future generations, tribes are taking their language revitalization efforts more seriously then ever.

A bi-product of such documentation efforts is that the stories of Native language speakers are being documented, but what about the stories of everybody else?

It is important for everyones story to be heard in order for tribal histories to be complete. It is important for the truth, and it is equally important for us to recognize everyone's stories as equal in importance or we become hypocrites; creating superficial hierarchies of importance in our oral histories based upon Eastern (and I mean east of the Atlantic) concepts of what Indian stories should be documented/what documentation projects should be funded. As indigenous communities we should not allow the grant cycles to dictate the fundamental nature/content of our cultural revitalization work or we become the scientists trying to capture "dying cultures" on paper, tape, cds... this work is the work of people who don't know any better. It is the work of scientists whose missions are no longer politically correct, despite proclaimed good intentions-

As native knowledge and cultural activists, it is our job to do good work according to the wants and needs of our communities- in accordance with the indigenous laws of the land (not only when its convenient, but always).

I'm excited to say, thats what seems to be happening in Karuk country as we speak!

This weekend marks the first technical training of Karuk youth for an exciting new Oral History project in which the stories of any interested elders can be documented by participating youth.

This creates a three fold documentation:

1) Hours of Interview will be collected on HDV for future archival/historical/tribal/familial use & benefit.

2) Elders and youth will be able to work together, and as the youth are filming- they will also be listening to the stories of their elders, thusly creating a traditional person-to-person transmission of oral history from elder to young person.

3) The several month project will also involve youth participants in editing final short films that will be presented to the greater tribal communities at a community film festival this spring! Thusly educating the greater tribal community to these stories/common histories, and positively rewarding elder & youth participants through the ability to share their work with their friends and families on a larger local scale.

Is Language Life? --LILC, Davis 2009--

Yootva ikxareeyav,
Hooray spirit people,
te apunva, nani supa
You understand, my days
karu vura nani harinay;
my collective years
voom vura yav karu yaamach;
they have been good as well as beautiful
voom vura ikyaakam karu vura yaamahukkich
they have been difficult as well as simple
haa, ko vura pa nanu kuup'ha.
yes, all of them have been OUR doings
Nukyaviichvuti pa nani kuup'ha xakaan.
we've worked together to determine my every course of action
Yootva.
hooray
Chimi ni'ahooheesh pa ahirak.
May I continue to walk in the light
Ux pa nanu taat te karit.
the earth is our mother, n all.

Our physicle bodies are mostly water, without water we shrivel and die- like salted slugs.

Recently I took a trip with my young son to the university of U.C. Davis for a conference called Language is Life, put on bi-anually by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS). The conference was one I'm not used to frequenting, but my daugter and older sister are apart of the program and so with a little nudge from them we decided to turn the conference into a family affair. I drove through Friday afternoon and got myself lost between Santa Rosa and Davis, but finally I arrived fashionably late just as the registration table was about to close Friday night. My son and I found our dorm room and settled in for the night, he was excited and I was unsure of just exactly what I was getting myself into.

The next day began with a man from somewhere in Washington, he spoke a native language and infact ran an immersion school (and he advocated arranged marriage between the best speaking children, a sober truth thinly veiled by what would have been humor [had it been a joke]).

For the first hour and a half, the man lectured us in language. He walked us through his alphabet, had us singing prayers, talking about dishes, playing games, talking about eachother, and even laughing at puns in his language...
The first think i thought of was, "Immersion has come a long way from the eighties when my eldest was taught how to say single words with the help of pan-indian flashcards... Yes, immersion teaching methods and methodologies have come a long way."

Why is this important?
Well, if water is important to the physicle health of humanity then you could think or language as important to the human in every being. Language is the health of something older and wiser then states, language is the health of cultures, civilizations, peoples, and for the majority of Native Peoples our languages are endangered.
With the fabric of our cultures "at risk" we are running into road block relaities...
our children are forging new relationships with themselves via gangs, and re-forging destructive habits they've inherited from several generations of the abused Indigenous People that make-up our history.
People talk about the statistics of Indian youth, families, suicides...
But without talking about Native Languages
we are not "seeing with the eyes in our hearts"
we are plucking the chords of foreighn instruents and still our children have no words through which they can vent thier frustration, or voice the grief that has been building like water pressing against a dam forced on the river generations ago-
Without our Native Languages our way of life is lost.
That is why the government spent so many millions taking indian children and carting them off to boarding schools to break them of thier ability to speak, to connect to thier families, to thier peers, to themselves...
And this is why AICLS, and the LANGUAGE IS LIFE Conference, and the BREATH OF LIFE CONFERENCE exsist.
Indigenous people are not going to fade quietly into the night, we are going to drag our family members to conferences, and talk in our languages at the dinner table even if its hard at first, we will continue to create bi-lingual cats and dogs and we will continue to exhist as long as we have the will to find the words that enable us to understand what it means to exhist.

At this conference, a pannel discussion happened.
One of the federally recognized tribes of Southern California was instrumental in creating a bill that was recently sighned by Governor Schwartzenegger. The bill will make it easier for tribes to get native speakers, and teachers of Native Languages certification that serves the same purpose as credentials throughout the state of California.
One small step for Indian Kind, on giant step for a single tribe...

The thing I was not anticipating to witness during this pannel presentation, was the standoff that followed during the Q & A session afterwards. You see the bill was created to benefit Federally recognized tribes only. It was a choice of words easy for the federally recognized tribe behind the bill to assert- and yet thier close relations were left in the cold (the non-federally recognized tribal members of neighboring tribes, and even the un-federally recognized neighboring factions of the same tribe).
Many people were upset, language workers written down or off as extinct voiced thier teary objections to some Indians making things better for thier own while leaving thier cussins to deal with the wolves of tearany on thier own.
It was a stark difference between the haves, and have nots in NDN California.
I often find it is that way in the north betwen those who have reservation land, and those tribes that wern't so lucky... But being in the south made me realize to be federally recognized is not something to be taken forgranted- things could be worse.
As I begin to see how much responsibility we have to eachother and our languages, I'm impressed by those tribes without recognition or funds who are still fighting for thier languages-
we are all fighting for our lives in today's language climate-
and as I watched my son and oldest daughter argue in Karuk, teasing each other and playing keepaway in language,
in the language my mother was cut off from when they took her away from her family and sent her to boarding school...
in a language I hardly ever heard growing up...
I feelt a sense of hope. Language is a seed like any other, with enough water and love, it never fails to grow.